Dhalgren

Fenster, I really think we should take this poor young man inside. Mr Calkins can't possibly object. This is something of an exceptional circumstance.'

Fenster took dark brown hands from his pockets and came over. 'I'm afraid it isn't exceptional. We've checked, now come on back inside.'

With surprising strength Fenster tugged him to his feet. His right temple exploded three times en route. He grabbed the side of his head. There was crisp blood in his hair; and wet blood in his sideburn.

'Can you stand up?' Fenster asked.

'Yes.' The word was dough in his mouth. 'Ah… thanks for my—' he almost shook his head again, but remembered—'my notebook.'

The man in the tie looked sincerely perplexed. With a very white hand, he touched his shoulder. 'You're sure you're all right?'

'Yes,' automatically. Then, 'Could I get some water?'

'Certainly,' and then to Fenster. 'We can certainly take him inside for a glass of water.'

'No—' Fenster spoke with impatient resignation— 'we can't take him inside for a glass of water.' It ended with set jaw, small muscles there defined in the dark skin. 'Roger is very strict. You'll just have to put up with it. Please, let's go back in.'

The white man — fifty-five? sixty? — finally took a breath. 'I'm…' Then he just turned away.

Fenster — forty? forty-five? — said, 'This isn't a good neighborhood to be in, young fellow. I'd get back downtown as fast as I could. Sorry about all this.'

'That's all right,' he got out. 'I'm okay.'

'I really am sorry.' Fenster hurried after the older gentleman.

He watched them reach the corner, turn. He raised his caged hand, looked at it between the blades. Was that why they had…? He looked back toward the street.

His head gave a gratuitous throb.

He collected the paper and the notebook, mumbling profanity, and walked out.

They'd apparently gone back through the gate. Motherfucker. Motherfuckers, he thought. The gloom was denser now. He began to wonder how long he'd been away from the park. Four or five hours? His head hurt a pot. And it was getting dark.

Also it looked like rain… But the air was dry and neutral.

Brisbain South had just become Brisbain North when he saw, a block away, three people run from one side of the avenue to the other.

They were too far to see if they wore chains around their necks. Still, he was overcome with gooseflesh. He stopped with his hand on the side of a lamp post. (The globe was an inverted crown of ragged glass points, about the smaller, ragged collar of the bulb.) He felt his shoulders pull involuntarily together. He looked at the darkening sky. And the terror of the vandal-wrecked city assailed him: His heart pounded.

His armpits grew slippery.

Breathing hard, he sat with his back to the post's base.

He took the pen from his pocket and began to click the point. (He hadn't put the orchid on…?) After a moment, he stopped to take the weapon from his wrist and put it through his belt loop again: moving armed through the streets might be provocative…?

He looked around again, opened his notebook, turned quickly past 'Brisbain' to a clean page, halfway or more through.

'Charcoal,' he wrote down, in small letters, 'like the bodies of burnt beetles, heaped below the glittering black wall of the house on the far corner.' He bit at his lip, and wrote on: 'The wet sharpness of incinerated upholstery cut the general gritty stink of the street. From the rayed hole in the cellar window a grey eel of smoke wound across the sidewalk, dispersed before' at which point he crossed out the last two words and substituted, 'vaporized at the gutter. Through another window,' and crossed out window, 'still intact, something flickered. This single burning building in the midst of dozens of other whole buildings was,' stopped and began to write all over again:

'Charcoal, like the bodies of beetles, heaped below the glittering wall. The sharpness of incinerated upholstery cut the street's gritty stink.' Then he went back and crossed out 'the bodies of' and went on: 'From a broken cellar window, a grey eel wound the sidewalk to vaporize at the gutter. Through another, intact, something flickered. This burning building,' crossed that out to substitute, 'The singular burning in the midst of dozens of whole buildings,' and without breaking the motion of his hand suddenly tore the whole page from the notebook.

Pen and crumpled paper in his hand; he was breathing hard. After a moment, he straightened out the paper, and on a fresh page, began to copy again:

'Charcoal, like beetles heaped under the glittering wall…'

He folded the torn paper in four and put it back in the notebook when he had finished the next revision. On the back the former owner of the notebook had written:

…first off. It doesn't reflect my daily life. Most of what happens hour by hour is quiet and still. We sit most of the time

Once more he made a face and closed the cover.

The mist had turned evening-blue. He got up and started along the street.

Several blocks later he identified the strange feeling: Though it was definitely becoming night, the air had not even slightly cooled. Frail smoke lay about him like a neutralizing blanket.

Ahead, he could see the taller buildings. Smoke had gnawed away the upper stories. Stealthily, he descended into the injured city.

It does not offer me any protection, this mist; rather a refracting grid through which to view the violent machine, explore the technocracy of the eye itself, spelunk the semi-circular canal. I am traveling my own optic nerve. Limping in a city without source, searching a day without shadow, am I deluded with the inconstant emblem? I don't like pain. With such disorientation there is no way to measure the angle between such nearly parallel lines of sight, when focusing on something at such distance.

4

'There you are!' She ran out between the lions, crossed the street.

He turned, surprised, at the lamp post.

She seized his hand in both of hers. 'I didn't think I would see you again before— Hey! What happened?' Her face twisted in the shadow. She lost all her breath.

'I got beat up.'

Her grip dropped; she raised her fingers, brushed his face.

'Owww…'

'You better come with me. What in the world did you do?'

'Nothing!' vented some of his indignation.

She took his hand again to tug him along. 'You did something. People just don't get beat up for nothing at all.'

'In this city—' he let her lead—'they do.'

'Down this way. No. Not even in this city. What happened? You've got to get that washed off. Did you get to Calkins'?'

'Yeah.' He walked beside her; her hand around his was almost painfully tight — then, as though she realized it, the grip loosened. 'I was looking over the wall when these scorpions got at me.'

'Ohhh!' That seemed to explain it to her.

''Oh' what?'

'Roger doesn't like snoopers.'

'So he sets scorpions to patrol the battlements?'